Two Types of Optical Circuits

Schematics of two types of optical circuits -- the three particle trimer functions as a nanoscale magnet, while the seven particle heptamer exhibits almost no scattering for a narrow range of wavelengths.

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By chemically building clusters of nanospheres from a liquid, a team of Harvard researchers, in collaboration with scientists at Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Houston, has created novel devices with amazing and exotic optical properties not found in nature.

Their research findings, published in the May 28, 2010, issue of Science, demonstrate simple scalable devices that exhibit customizable optical properties suitable for applications ranging from highly sensitive sensors and detectors to invisibility cloaks. Using particles consisting of concentric metallic and insulating shells, the researchers devised a bottom-up, self-assembly approach to meet the design challenge. To learn more about this research, see the Eurekalert story, "Applied physicists create building blocks for a new class of optical circuits." (Date of Image: May/June 2010)